In her Times of Israel op-ed of September 4, Dr. Mijal Bitton admonishes “liberal Jews everywhere” that “Jewish survival isn’t immoral”—and she calls for an “internal fight” against Jews like me to achieve the “reawakening and rededication of the Jewish people.” As a Reform rabbi, I want to push back against her view of Jewish morality and explain why many liberal Jews see it differently.

Dr. Bitton is right to criticize Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s troubling comment that Jews should sacrifice themselves for the sake of humanity. But her assertion that Nessel’s view is a natural outgrowth of liberal Judaism is not only wrong; it also condescends to liberal Jews who care about the future of the Jewish people no less than does Dr. Bitton herself.

It is true that liberal Jews tend to reject the tribalist mindset she promotes—but not, as she claims, because we think Jewish particularism has to “apologize for itself and explain why it deserves to survive.” We reject it because we do not believe the tribe is an end unto itself. We hold, rather, that the tribe is charged with carrying out the ethical demands of the Torah. Therefore, the tribe is subordinate to those demands.

Self-defense, of course, is a........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)